This invention relates generally to switching circuitry for use with telecommunications related equipment. More particularly, it relates to a phone line selector module formed of phone line selector circuitry which allows for automatically sensing and switching from first input phone lines connected to an output line to second input phone lines connected to the output phone line in response to a ring signal.
As is generally well-known to those skilled in the art of the telecommunications industry, large scale copper wires have been commonly used to provide a plain old telephone service (POTS) from a central office of a local telephone company to a subscriber's or telephone user's premises. The subscriber typically must only use the wires that are connected to his premises for a single designated type of service (e.g., regular analog telephone services). In view of recently developed technology, there are now available new digital phone services, such as digital subscriber line services, which offer many benefits over the POTS. Thus, a subscriber might want to have the option of signing up the service for either POTS or digital phone services.
If a subscriber is currently signed up with POTS and desires to switch to digital phone services, the company offering the digital phone services or VOIP (Voice-Over Internet Protocol) service must sent out a service truck with a technician to the subscriber's premises for manually disconnecting the phone lines from the central office and re-connecting them to the VOIP lines of a broadband service provider. This suffers from the disadvantages of not only time-consuming labor-cost, but also the down-time for the subscriber to accommodate the visit from the technician.
Accordingly, there are various arrangements of switching circuits already known in the prior art which have been provided for automatically disconnecting the phone lines from the central office and re-connecting them to the VOIP lines of a broadband service provider. For example, there is known of switching circuits referred to as “Netja X Switcher” and “Easy Port Smart Switch” which are manufactured and sold by Sistellia Corporation of Stamford, N.Y. However, these products suffer from the problem that they typically are functioning as one-way latching switches wherein the switches are designed to perform the switching operation only once. In other words, once the switching operation is completed the device will be permanently latched in the selected mode and cannot be changed back. This would be quite troublesome to a subscriber who has switched from POTS to a digital phone service and becomes dissatisfied and desires to switch back to POTS.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide improved phone line selector switch circuitry which permits the switching automatically back and forth between first input lines coupled to the regular analog telephone service and second input lines connected to the digital phone service. Further, it would be advantageous to fabricate the selector switch circuitry so that it can be re-used multiple times in order to effect added cost savings. In view of this, the inventor of the present invention has developed such improved phone line selector circuitry which includes an output port that is automatically switched from first input lines to second input lines in response to a ring signal detected on the second input lines.